I started a Web Site in 1999 when I came back into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Tripod decided to block me a few years ago , so I stopped writing, posting. SO I decided to take the posts I had there and put them here. Plus new ones I found on the net and shares of my own. Take what you need and pass on the rest! Blessings ds♥

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

But by the grace of God, there go I


In early sobriety, I sometimes had trouble identifying with other people’s alcoholism, and often wondered whether I belonged. After all, I had never been to prison for manslaughter while driving drunk. I never robbed a liquor store in a blackout, or woke up in a different state – or country – not know how I had gotten there. There were countless other things that had never happened to me either. As I discussed this with my sponsor, he said I hadn’t experienced these things – yet.
As I started working the Steps and writing inventories, I began to see what he meant. First of all, I actually had crashed a car while drunk, and I had been arrested for it when I was seventeen.

Thankfully, I hit an empty parked car, and no one in my vehicle was injured. Other inventories revealed plenty of times I blacked out and came to in strange circumstances. As I looked deeper, I identified more with the stories I heard, and I felt the gravity of the word “yet.”
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Today, I know my stories could have ended very differently if I had continued drinking, and any of the outcomes I heard others share could easily have been my fate as well. Moreover, I also know that any of these terrifying endings could be in my future as well – they are only one drink away. Today, when I see or hear these stories, I say a quiet prayer of gratitude, for I know that “but by the grace of God, there go I…”

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